Ladies Gaelic Football Association President Pat Quill urges more females to come out and support Ladies Gaelic Football

By Jackie Cahill

LADIES Gaelic Football Association President Pat Quill has urged more females to come out and watch the summer’s big TG4 championship matches.

The profile of the LGFA continues to grow but Quill admits that many potential supporters find themselves more attracted to men’s Gaelic football and hurling matches.

But Quill believes that the launch of the LGFA’s strategic plan to cover 2011-2016 will drive the Association forward and make the game an attractive product for new fans.

At Croke Park on Wednesday evening, the ‘Pathway for Success – 2011-2016’ was officially launched by Quill and LGFA CEO Helen O’Rourke.

Among the exciting initiatives are a new website and logo, which Quill believes will make the Association more “trendy.”

And Quill insisted that ambitious targets laid out in the strategic plan, such as increasing the Irish membership of the LGFA to 200,000 by 2016, along with attracting 40,000 fans through the turnstiles for All-Ireland finals within five years, can be met.

Quill said: “I do because the profile of our Association is growing the whole time.

“With the increased media profile, TG4 has played a huge role in that. If you look at the newspapers from last weekend’s National League finals, that was the best coverage we ever got. The interest is out there and the profile is growing. Our aim is to encourage our own players to come and support their game. Sometimes, what’s happening is there are clashes with matches in counties, where family members are playing in games, football, hurling and camogie. We intend to tackle that.”

Quill added: “The launch of our new image, our logo, the website, will give us a much more modern, trendy Association and people like to be associated with that. It’s like everything, it takes time. We have made huge strides already. If you think back to 1974, 300 people attended our All-Ireland, 22,000 now. The biggest female attendance of any female sport in Europe and the second biggest in the world. The only female sport that beats our organisation is the women’s World Cup in soccer. “That’s a great achievement but we’re not happy with that – we want to push on. People love to see photographs and reports of games in the paper – they think then that is something to be involved with.”